William Watkins

Watkins also raised his niece Francis Ellen Watkins Harper (orphaned at a young age), who became one of the co-founders of the American Women's Suffrage Association (AWS) during the mainstream Women's Suffrage Movement, in 1869. Francis was also an accomplished and well published African American poet.

In 1852, Watkins moved to Toronto, Canada, followed by his son William J.. He died in Canada in 1858.

Watkins and Russell had eight children, including William J. (1826), Richard R. (1827), George T. (1828), John L. (1831), Henry G. (1834), Henrietta (1836), Robert P. (1841), and Lloyd N. (1845). William J., like his father, became a prominent abolitionist, at one time writing for Frederick Douglass's The North Star.

Watkins married Henrietta Russell in the mid-1820s.

Watkins attended the Bethel Charity School, which Daniel Coker founded as a school for Black children in 1807, despite Maryland laws forbidding the education of Black people. At the age of 19, Watkins became a teacher at the school. This followed the departure of Coker to be part of the colonization movement, moving to Liberia.

Reverend William J. Watkins, Sr. (1803  – 1858) was a Black abolitionist, educator, and minister from Baltimore, Maryland.